The Animus Gate (Book One of The Animus Trilogy) Read online

  “Yeah,” cracked Beaumont, “we’re practically the perfect soldier, as far as they’re concerned.” Beaumont was the squad medic. His body was mostly biomechanical, which caused some brain chemistry imbalances that still befuddled imperial chemists. The man got into a rage sometimes. That was what had landed him in the PMU.

  Darius suspected it was more of a psychological issue. He wondered if at some point the army scientists would just give up and replace the rest of Beaumont with biomech parts. Maybe give him a synth noodle. The thought kept him up at night.

  While most of the team was standing in a cluster, Sergeant Velasquez lay in her bunk and read a physical book, which was an unusual quirk for a grunt. “What do you think, Sarge?” Darius asked her.

  Without looking up from her book, she said dryly, “They don’t pay me to think, Bakari, they pay me to keep you assholes in line.”

  “Speakin’ of assholes,” said Boone, “I gotta hit the can.” He wandered off to the head.

  Darius had heard a rumor that Boone had to do all his business sitting down. Given the pocket of silence that followed in the wake of his departure, it looked like he wasn’t the only one thinking about it.

  “...Anyways,” said Chandra, “does anybody know how long we’ve got before command throws us in the chipper?”

  “Forty-eight hours,” said Velasquez.

  “Hey, Velasquez,” Rizzo chirped, “what book are you readin’?”

  “It’s called ‘Leave Me the Fuck Alone,’ Rizzo.” Velasquez craned her neck back at the group. “Unless somebody starts bleeding out their eyes in the next 48 hours, I don’t wanna be bothered. You all got that?”

  “Yes, Sargeant,” they mumbled.

  Darius decided to hit the mess hall. He was curious to see how the regulars ate. It couldn’t have been worse than the slop he’d been choking down for the last three months, even out here in the vacuum. And who knew, maybe he could send a few juicy rumors back to Chandra, assuming they weren’t already getting circulated by the man himself. His uncle Omar had said more than once that it was a good idea to bond with a unit’s smuggler. You just had to avoid going down with them if they got caught.

  The mess was populated mostly by sailors tonight, which didn’t surprise him. This crew wouldn’t be groundside, while Zebra and the rest of the battalion would be dropping right in, so the former still had an appetite. But Darius figured that if he was gonna be lizard food in a few hours, he wanted to die with a decent meal in his system first. Thankfully, the kitchen had produced a heap of food-shaped food. There was even a chunk of something that looked like genuine animal protein. He ordered up and took a seat that he thought was far enough away from others to avoid interaction, but not so far that someone might single him out.

  “What the fuck is a peener doing in my mess,” said a sailor to his left.

  So much for that.

  His buddy grunted. “Fucking traitors and criminals got no business on a proper boat like ours, you ask me.”

  “I say we do somethin’ about it. Send this discount trench monkey back to his protein bags.”

  After Darius’s recent training and neppa regimen, he was prepared to fold these two chuckleheads into human pretzels, even though he was no match for regular army. He also knew that he had practically enough strength to kill them by accident. It had taken a while to get used to the additional power, mindworms or no. So he had been warned against getting into exactly the kinds of scraps that these sailors now wanted a taste of.

  So he simply stopped eating and stared straight ahead. One of the sailors pushed him, but he knew that he still wasn’t safe to react.

  “Come on, peener, get your ass out of here and go suck a bag.” The sailor shoved harder.

  He guessed there was no way he was going to avoid a fight if he stuck around. “Okay,” he said, and he got up to leave. “I’m leaving now.”

  He turned towards the wall as he rose from the bench, and the other sailor shoved him right into it. “Look at this, peener’s got no fight in him. Good thing he ain’t droppin’ alongside real army. Eh, Biscuit?”

  Darius snorted. “Your friend’s name is Biscuit?” He couldn’t help himself.

  Biscuit took this as a cue to shove Darius against the wall himself. “And who even cares what the fuck your name is? Once you hit the ground, you’ll prolly be dead inside a hundred paces. Wars like this, they can fit what’s left of you in a shoebox.” They were between him and the exit, so he wasn’t sure how to get out of this cleanly.

  “Aye,” said the other, “assuming they even bother to sweep up your guts and all that.” He reached out to shove Darius again. He quickly sidestepped the sailor, who bumped into the wall. Biscuit seemed to think that a fight was starting, and he telegraphed a haymaker so badly that ducking it was trivial. At this point, the other sailor had turned around, and the young navyman ended up taking Biscuit’s blow right in the face.

  About a half-dozen other seamen got to their feet, and they all had the look in their eye.

  “Cut the shit.”

  Darius looked to the mess hall line and saw the officer who’d just barked the order.

  Everyone cut the shit.

  Darius took the opportunity to bus his table and head back to his billet before he ran into another Biscuit. As a “peemer,” he evidently didn’t warrant the trouble of a formal inquiry. They figured he’d be dead in the trenches soon anyway.

  He lay down in his bunk and tried to think of nothing. It didn’t work.

  Every day that had gone by during training had been another day that Nadira probably languished in a cell. Every time he had gone to the can, he had looked at himself in the mirror and wondered why the universe had sent him down this path.

  He figured that she still had to be breathing, or else they would have canceled his training and sent him back for more interrogation. They still wanted to play them against each other. He could only wonder if she’d gotten his message.

  She seemed like a tough woman. Like his brother, there were more layers to her than he’d expected. Maybe this time he would get the chance to forgive someone while they still lived. And there was that other thing: She had the inside scoop on Sar-Zin’s little peccadillo. But without any fix on her location, much less a way to get out of this quagmire, it was all academic for now.

  Despite everything, he drifted off to a dreamless sleep. It felt like only minutes had passed when he was startled awake by the sound of the PA telling them it was time to suit up. He scrambled into his gear, but he didn’t regret missing breakfast. At this point, it was likely to end up on the battlefield, one way or the other.

  Platoon 3 of Zebra Company marched onto its assigned dropship, the Liebowitz. It was a boxy affair with massive VTOL engines, a manned turret under the cockpit, and a remote turret under each wing. Zebra was not allowed on the command deck. They would stay down below, locked into their jump seats. This would put them next to the vehicle bay with the APCs that would take them to their ultimate drop-off point. It was efficient.

  The sims had walked them through the launch procedure countless times, but the worms apparently didn’t know that you could end up agonizingly far back in the queue.

  “I can’t stand this shit,” Boone grumbled.

  Sergeant Velasquez shot him a look. “You’re lucky they don’t give a fuck about us, private. At Kabarad, the navy sent the PMUs out first. The enemy used them as target practice. Over 70 percent casualty rate. So I hope this bucket is the last fucking one off the boat today, and so should you.”

  “Yes, Sarge.”

  A few silent minutes later, there came a sudden lurch as the Liebowitz was released from its docking clamps. At this point, Darius could activate his holo feed. He flicked it on with an eye gesture and got a picture of the planet and the war front that had heaved back and forth across its mangled surface.

  It occurred to him that he didn’t even know what humanity and the Shiza were fighting over. He’d never thought to ask anyon
e. He wondered who would even have answers. And not just answers, but the actual truth.

  He was going over the list of people he knew who might have some information, just as a thought exercise more than anything else, when an explosion tore through the hull. It was as though the entire ship had just flown into a brick wall at an off angle, and it began to spin wildly out of control. Screaming and shouting erupted in the holding area, and Darius could see flames off to his right. The ship veered, shuddered, dropped, and climbed...like it was dodging artillery rounds.

  “What the fuck is AA doing down there?” Chandra shouted. “Where is the air support?”

  “Everyone prepare for a hard landing!” said Velasquez. “I want you all ready to jump out of this can like it’s—”

  She was interrupted by an impact even more violent than the first one, and Darius lost consciousness as the Liebowitz spun out of control.

  ✽✽✽

  He awoke with a ripper of a headache. He checked the clock in his visor. He’d been out for less than a minute. His jumpseat clamps were twisted, so he had to wrench himself out. The ship was tilted downward, but not so sharply that he had to climb to get anywhere.

  He looked around the holding area; people were badly injured, many were dead, and some were simply gone. He didn’t remember the name of the soldier who had been sitting to his right, but he guessed that it didn’t matter now. Across from him was a gaping hole in the ship. Private Rizzo had been sitting right there two minutes earlier, chattering about synths again. Not anymore.

  Suit integrity looked like it was going to be a problem for many in the squad. The planet of Kareeva did not have a human-friendly atmosphere or climate. According to the diagnostics, his suit was nominal. Seeing no one issuing orders, Darius began picking through the debris in the hopes of locating a fire extinguisher. Flames were everywhere.

  The comms crackled in his ear. “Bakari, report to the vehicle bay immediately. Do you copy?” His visor identified the speaker as Sergeant Rustova, who had also come down in the Leibowitz.

  “Copy, Sarge, on my way.”

  One look at the vehicle bay made it clear that the rest of the ship had been hit just as badly. Two APCs appeared to be totaled, the ladder to the command deck was missing, and there were gashes in the hull as though the ship had been attacked by Godzilla. Smoke was everywhere, but a couple of soldiers had found extinguishers and were dealing with the flames.

  There were shockingly few people waiting in the vehicle bay. It looked like only half the platoon had survived the crash. They were all gathered around Rustova.

  “Private Bakari reporting as ordered, Sergeant.”

  She nodded to him and spoke on the platoon channel. “Everyone, we got some bad intel. Command had those AA guns pegged as municipal satellite transceivers. Sergeant Velasquez is in need of medical aid and will be taken to the rendezvous point in the remaining APC by her squad, along with the other injured. PFC Chang will lead Squad 3 and 4 there on foot. Squad 1 will stay here with me to await reinforcement and to secure this location. Any questions?”

  “Yeah, Sarge,” said one of the privates. “Who is PFC Chang?”

  “Private Chang was promoted in the field to replace Sergeant Oppenhauer, who is a casualty. Anything else?”

  “Sarge,” said another, “how far away is the rendezvous?”

  “We were knocked off-course. It’s 25 klicks out.”

  The comm channel erupted with groaning and curses.

  “I don’t wanna hear it,” said Rustova. “You have your orders, everyone. Get moving.”

  Rustova assigned Darius to the APC’s remote turret. While Chandra was a sniper, a machine gun was a different beast. The stats from the sims indicated that Darius would be a better fit. Boone would be tending to the wounded, and Masasi would be on comms and navigation. This roster was on APC duty because they were the only squad that had survived mostly intact. The remainder of the platoon was now a patchwork. Chandra was now a PFC, in case Velasquez didn’t make it to the rendezvous.

  It was a mixed bag. The APC had armor and some potent scanners, but it couldn’t dive into a trench if you spotted advancing hostiles. He also wondered how long it had been since this thing had gone through maintenance. Reportedly, a lot of the motor pool spent more time on a repair lift than in the field.

  None of the sims had prepared the battalion for a scenario as sideways as this. The next few hours would determine if this unit was adaptive or doomed. There was no middle ground.

  Darius helped Boone carry the wounded into the APC, and the group was on its way to the rendezvous in less than ten minutes. Darius tried to ignore the envious glances of the squads that had to make a go of it on foot, never mind the one that had to hold the fort.

  He tried not to wonder if his unit had already made a deadly mistake that wouldn't emerge until it was too late. You just had to keep moving and hope for the best, while preparing for the worst.

  As the APC pulled away, Masasi brought the scanners online and began doing sweeps. She wasn’t wasting any time.

  Judging by the feed they were getting from the Artemis still orbiting above them, it looked like the Shiza were converging on the crashed dropship. On the bright side, that meant the enemy wasn’t on a course to intercept the APC.

  By the time the Artemis found a targeting solution on the AA guns with its orbital strike cannons and sent down rescue and reinforcement, it would probably be too late to come to the rescue of the Liebowitz. And the Artemis couldn't fire on the converging Shiza without incurring unacceptable collateral damage. It didn't have anything surgical enough to support a ground incursion.

  “Looks like we’re getting out of here just in time,” said Darius.

  Masasi nodded. “I don’t think squads 3 or 4 are going anywhere now. It will be just us out here. I'll do what I can to spot hostiles for you, but the terrain is pretty uneven, and I’m not getting a steady signal from the orbital fleet.”

  “So it goes,” said Darius. “Boone, how are we doing back there?”

  “Velasquez’s right hand is mangled, but she’s stable,” said Boone. “A few of the injured are gonna be getting prosthetics, but I think I have enough sealant to establish temporary suit integrity for the group.”

  “Copy that.”

  The landscape of the front was arid and rocky, dominated by mesas, scrub desert, and natural stone pillars. The cloud cover was dense and blue-tinted, and the atmosphere had a sulfurous yellow cast. Only a late afternoon kind of light made it down to the ground. Where mesas were in close proximity, their convergence created natural ambush chokepoints—but also opportunities to evade ground scanners.

  It looked like the next 24 klicks would be a game of cat and mouse, and it was up to Masasi to guide them through the gauntlet. A tall order for someone with no true field experience, but Darius didn’t see her sweating just yet. Just grim determination.

  Thankfully, Kareeva was not home turf for the Shiza, so they were not willing to die to defend it. Command believed that if the Army and Navy pushed hard enough, the Shiza would stop pushing back and cede the territory. Thus the current invasion. If only they'd done a proper sweep before sending the dropships.

  The APC made it ten klicks before a large explosion bloomed on the horizon behind them. They all heard the report a few moments later. Darius shot a glance at Chandra, who glanced back and shook his head as if to say, No idea.

  “Masasi,” said Darius, “can you get a reading on that?”

  “Scanning now...that appears to be a tactical nuke roughly in the area of the crash site.”

  “Analysis?”

  “I think they just triggered the ship’s self-destruct.”

  There was silence in the cabin.

  After a moment, Darius cleared his throat and said, “Can you raise them?”

  “I’m trying to isolate, but...the radiation is interfering with comms.”

  Darius spotted a detachment of Shiza at 3 o’clock, riding on their equivale
nt of a hoverbike—preferable to tires in a military engagement because it left no tracks. The beefy lateral thrusters required to control these vehicles properly would never work on a public road, but they were fine for military vehicles operating in the field. He still wondered how powerful those repulsors had to be to keep those immense lizards off the ground.

  “Contact! Contact!” said Darius. “Opening fire!”

  He aimed his crosshairs at the lead pip and squeezed off a stream of .50 caliber rounds from the APC’s center-mounted remote turret.

  “Moving to evade,” said Chandra. “Masasi, I need tactical routes!”

  “Feeding them in,” said Masasi, her hands dancing across the keypads.

  The windshield’s AR projectors displayed two glowing drive lines on the road, and Chandra chose the one that was furthest away from the oncoming detachment. The Shiza split wide to flank, minus one dead combatant.

  Darius chose the flank that was coming across their path and fired another burst of rounds, this time incendiary. Another Shiza went down, but the remaining two blew past the APC and off to its right, into the scrub that was getting harder to see by the moment. The system’s primary sun was dipping below the horizon, and they were now in a twilight where low-light vision would be temporarily ineffective.

  Darius could spin the turret all the way around, but its downward angle of attack maxed out at 15 degrees. Perhaps a side effect of handing out the defense contract to the lowest bidder. If the lizards got close enough, he wouldn’t be able to do anything. He supposed he should have been grateful that the APC had even gotten this far without breaking down of its own accord.

  “Masasi,” he said, “feed all available positional data on the right flank to me.”

  “Copy that, Bakari, streaming now.”

  Just as Darius had feared, the flank was coming back hard.

  “Boone!” he said. “Take over the turret, I’m moving to the side door!”

  “You’re what?”

  “Just do it!” Darius got out of the turret seat and readied his rifle.